Free Space Shot.com is attracting a lot of press. Takeup of our press release is about 900 media folks (I’m told the average is about 250). We have over 60,000 folks who have downloaded our press release. We’re on track to get 5 times as many page views as Hobbyspace.com this month.

We have also attracted some skeptics. Part of our marketing effort was to find out that there is a deep cognitive dissonance afflicting people over 13 in this country. Not only are they dissatisfied with NASA’s efforts to produce a space age, but they are bitter and resentful. They have not satisfactorily mourned the loss of their childhood and adolescent fantasies of being an astronaut. Not only are they jaded about spaceflight, but they are hostile to anyone who puts forward a legitimate prospect of success. That’s why we are targeting students 9-13. They are pre-sold on space.

Hence, Free Space Shot’s target market is not people over 13; they are not only not pre-sold on space, but had those hopes dashed. They may say they want to see spaceflight, but that is frequently just a license to gripe about NASA. Or private industry. Or the government of their choice in one of the real or potential space powers in the last 60 years. When it comes to lifting a finger to actually fly into space themselves or help others do so, they don’t.

The most severe form of this affliction is outright hostility to personal spaceflight such as that exhibited by Rep. Jim Oberstar.

The skepticism gets louder when people are onto something. For example, I’ve had two folks pick on Free Space Shot as impossible and sinister. Sinister?! Lucas wasn’t pilloried for making millions on Star Wars. Science Fiction books? No, perfectly safe psychologically. Is it that I am hawking non-fiction hope? Let’s look at comparative track records for other non-fiction hopes:

Hope for world peace: not doing so good

Hope for peace in the middle east: not doing so good

Hope for end to religious strife: not doing so good except in Ireland

Hope for carbon abatement: not doing so good (although I am bullish)

Hope for energy independence: not doing so good

Hope for nuclear disarmament: not doing so good

Hope for winning the lottery: Illinois thinks it’s peaked and is selling

Hope for winning a poker tournament after paying by credit card: Against the law

Hope for NASA settling the Moon and Mars: about 15 years away and holding.

So I am putting hope for personal spaceflight for the middle class out there. Am I being held to the standard of a hope? No, I am being held to the standard of a juvenile ideal. Businesses sometimes fail, but I am considered a swindler if mine does. I am pilloried a cheat if I promise less than I should. So perfection drives out the good. Kudos to an I-think-I-can small business? No, pilloried for not having terms and conditions that make it cost $1 million for Virgin or Microsoft to give away a $250,000 space flight.

Teachers and parents take note. Your schoolchildren will be told that the dream they follow is impossible. The evidence? Just that improbable is close to impossible. I offer license to hope. Am I offering a good or a bad if I fail? If Google can raise $10 billion in ad revenue and NBC $2 billion a year, why not Free Space Shot $100 million? It can. If enough believe it and play, it will. 200,000 kids is only 1% of kids 9-13. That’s all we need to have our own private economy where the skeptics will just shake their heads and say that fools being led by fools have done the impossible and start harping on the next “impossible” dream that comes along.

I wouldn’t be attracting the criticism if I wasn’t starting to sound eerily plausible; too good to be true. What if it is true? What if it really is this easy? Go back to sleep while the kids and I prove it out. Join the fun in a few years when even your subconscious is convinced.

As they say in Little Miss Sunshine, “You can’t fail if you don’t quit.” We’re not quitting. The Moon or Bust.